Figure 3.2 JeanAntoine Watteau: Shop Sign of the Art Dealer Gersaint, oil on canvas, 163 × 308cm,
- Berlin, Schloß Charlottenburg.
Source: akgimages/Erich Lessing.Successful artists often aimed to please more than one section of the market. Watteau’s fêtes galantes
appealed to French aristocrats and wealthy financiers because they made implicit reference to noble
codes of politeness and leisure pursuits, and were appropriate to the growing number of private hotels
built or purchased by this class in the early eighteenth century. Because Watteau’s native elite clientele
was somewhat limited, however, many of his works were sold through the international art trade and
fetched high prices by the 1770s (Crow, 1985, 72–74). In Britain, ceramics designed by Wedgwood
appealed to the “middling orders,” but exports to America were also popular from the 1760s.
Increasingly, art became a valued commodity for anyone who could afford to buy prints, small paintings
or sculptures to decorate their homes. As buyers, merchants, artisans, shopkeepers, farmers and traders
formed the next tier down in status from the monarchy, aristocrats, wealthy officials and financiers. They
benefited from an art trade that operated increasingly freely within and across national boundaries. As
early as 1696 a ban was lifted in England on imports of old master and classical works, including copies
and prints. It had been imposed originally in order to protect the trade interests of guild members,
specifically, those of the Company of PainterStainers. Social and cultural oneupmanship fueled a
thriving trade in imports from Rome ordered by collectors and dealers in search of superior copies, in a
variety of media, of canonical ancient sculptures (Coltman, 2006, 123–164; Coltman, 2009, 117–158).
Auctions became a more common location for the purchase of art, dealers often trading there (Brewer,
1997, 202–204). One of the problems for British artists was that many auctioneers had a deeper
knowledge of continental than of British art. Nevertheless, dealers did a great deal to encourage those
from the middle ranks of society to join with their social superiors in the activity of collecting art. Where
the commercial interests of native artists failed to thrive, they might use their own studios as salesrooms –